


it's a green christmas in this town

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 5x10. "They're calling for a blizzard," Sadie says, three days before Christmas, and Meredith rolls her eyes. The weathermen were always wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Two weeks later, on a Monday, three days before Christmas, Meredith wakes up to an empty bed, an empty bathroom, and a shitload of noise coming from downstairs.

Nearly every light downstairs is turned on, plus the television, which is _never_ on, and she nearly gets her foot caught in the sleeping bag that lies haphazardly on the ground, a flaw in the ‘taking in strays' methodology that she's adopted. When she looks up from glancing at the offending item that could've broken her ankle, Sadie's laughing at her over a mug full of coffee. "Perhaps something should be done about our current situation."

"Three beds. Six people. Unless you and Lexie want to bunk together and we can somehow convince Izzie to pick a room, then you're stuck." Meredith answers, simply. Their living situation is, in a matter of hours, going to be the least of her concerns. She'll have patients and surgeries to scrub in on then. Thank goodness. "Why is everyone up?"

Sadie nods towards the television, which currently is airing some traffic report that Meredith doubts has anything to do with this. Unless there was some big multi-car accident and they're expecting causalities. In which case she wants to know why she wasn't woken up. Sadie clears it up fairly quickly, "They're expecting some big blizzard."

Meredith frowns at the television. "Of course they are," she answers, resignedly. They'll have their work cut out for them then. At least maybe then Cristina will be in a better mood (it's been weeks, and they've only just barely gotten to some form of a happy medium; it's nowhere near where they used to be and that kills her but she certainly isn't going to let that show).

There's a shrug and then Sadie takes a seat on the couch amid the blankets and Meredith continues on into the kitchen, which appears to be where everyone's gathered. Derek with his orange juice, his Muesli, and his newspaper, Alex with a half-asleep, half-annoyed expression on his face, Izzie looking alternately distant and vaguely amused at absolutely nothing at all, even while cooking, and Lexie, sticking close to Derek and looking like she didn't belong here and so thus was trying to fade into the wallpaper. Nothing new here.

"Morning," she tries for, receiving two groans, a quick kiss on the lips from Derek, and a chirpy ‘morning' from Lexie. "Snow?" she asks, as a way to get more of a reply. It works.

"Bullshit," Alex says, with a shake of his head. "All it's going to be is ice, and then there will be car crashes and the OR's will fill up."

"Karev, want to try not to sound so happy about that?" Derek speaks up, looking at him from over the top of his newspaper. It does absolutely nothing to deter Alex, not that she thought it would.

"I'm just saying." He replies, moving past Izzie to get to the coffee.

"Snow's good. Snow means happy people and white Christmases and...snow's good." Izzie pipes up, and Meredith shoots Alex a concerned look, which he catches and answers with one of his own. The more she watches Izzie lately, the more she thinks George may have had a point. Whatever's going on, it stills the retort that snow also leads to the aforementioned traffic accidents and, well, death.

It won't matter anyways; Alex is right, the weathermen are usually, almost as a rule, wrong.

\---

"I've got to get out of there." Lexie's eyes are wide and tired, and she can stare at charts all she wants but it doesn't look like much is being processed. Mark thinks it's the sneaking around; she's neither used to it nor very good at adapting to it.

Which is why he says, "You know there's always my hotel room. Might solve a lot of problems."

"I thought you said you didn't want Derek and Meredith to know?"

"I don't. Tell them you're moving back in with O'Malley." He makes a face on the man's name, one that she catches judging by the half-amused look that flashes on her face, ever so briefly.

She's quick to point out the flaw in his logic anyways, even if she is sleep deprived. "And when Meredith asks George and finds out I'm lying?"

"Then Derek draws and quarters me. If I'm lucky." He sighs; she has a point. "Tell them that you got your own place."

"On an intern's salary? Please tell me you're kidding." She gets this mischievous glint in her eye then, and he's not sure he wants to hear what comes next. Usually that's either really bad or really good. "Are you really that insistent on me moving in with you?"

He backs up real quick at that. "I never said moving in. I said staying, briefly."

She gives him a look like she doesn't believe him, not even a little. "Of course not. Just staying. For a while. Because that's so very different."

There are some times where he wishes he was just banging one of the brainless girls at the bar, or one of the more boring plastics nurses. This might be one of them.

It'll pass.

\---

"Hey," Meredith calls from behind her, walking up one of the hallways on the fourth floor. Cristina slows her pace, subconsciously, an automatic reaction, to let Meredith catch up with her. "Did you hear about the snow?"

"No." She doesn't understand why Meredith sounds so delighted by this. Or maybe sounds like she thinks Cristina should be delighted by this.

"Well they say there will be. Like of blizzard proportions. Lots of interesting surgeries on accident victims." Now she gets it. She gets that Meredith's trying. She appreciates it. Like normal, she also won't be verbalizing that. "Doesn't that kind of thing normally make you happy?"

Cristina all out stops now, so that she can look at Meredith, maybe get a better grasp of what exactly she wants from her, when she says, "Yes. But right now I have another interesting surgery to scrub in on so is there something you need?"

Meredith might have flinched. Maybe. Maybe she's seeing things. She recovers quickly either way, somehow keeping her voice steady, even, as she replies, "No, I just thought I'd let you know."

"Okay." Cristina pauses, one last opportunity for Meredith to say whatever it is that seems to be eating at her. She doesn't, just keeps her eyes on Cristina. "Thank you."

There's a tense moment before they go their separate ways. She wishes they could go back to the way they were before, really, she does; she just doesn't know how to get there.

\---

"White Christmases?" Denny asks, finally getting his say in now that she could reply without having people look at her like she had grown three heads because she was talking to herself. This is becoming a pattern. A pattern that was, at one time, novel and now has just grown tiring. She's tired of having what feels like two realities to deal with. It's just too much.

"Not today," she sighs, for lack of anything better.

\---

"Lexie," George has been trying to get to her all day, she realizes, but she also knows what he's going to ask, and she has no answer for him at all. At least not one that she can say. He's determined though, and so he corners her eventually. "Did you move out and not tell me?"

She looks everywhere but into his eyes. "No, I've just been staying over at Meredith's lately."

He frowns. "Meredith's? Really?" And it's not that he doesn't believe her, it's just that he's confused, which is way better than suspicious. Now she just has to keep it that way. That doesn't seem too hard a prospect because he gets this look like it all suddenly makes sense as he says, "Oh are you and Meredith...I mean are you two trying to do the..."

When it doesn't look like he's going to find the words, she tries to supply him with an end to that sentence. "The sisterly bonding thing? I guess, sort of, yeah," she lies right through her teeth, "In theory anyway."

"Oh, okay, well...that's good."

"Yeah." Lexie doesn't know what else to say.

"Alright, well, I've got to go, but..." and the thing about George is that they communicate perfectly well in that neither of them really ever knows what to say in these situations. Maybe that was their problem. "I know things haven't been so great but...I miss you."

A few weeks ago that would've been all she needed to hear. But it's much too late for her to say anything but, "Yeah, I miss you too," before she walks away from him.

\---

"Can I give you a hand with that?" Sadie's lips curl, her fingers brushing against him as she moves her hips just right so that they couldn't possibly be closer. She has yet to find a way to deal with Alex Karev so that he doesn't end up yelling at her, and hitting on him was a last resort since he's already got his own hot blonde - granted one who doesn't appear to be around much these days, so there is some wiggle room.

Alex looks at her through furrowed brows and she just peers up at him, bats her eyelashes a little. "I thought you were hitting on Torres."

Okay, well, maybe he's a little too astute for this game. "Who says you can't shake things up every once in awhile?"

He nods his head, like he can appreciate that, but only hands her the chart, one that by the looks of it she will have to rewrite later, and moves away, to the door. She follows, which he actually seems to expect, considering he keeps talking. "Sleeping with your superiors will get you nowhere."

Sadie laughs, "Hardly. If I was aiming to do that I'd be sleeping with an attending now wouldn't I?"

"Nice. But no. Not if you're trying to shake things up like you just said."

The smile she gives him is less of a perfectly calculated, trying to get him to look at her like that kind of smile, and more of a sudden understanding that they share a few more similarities than she had initially thought. "So it's not just any hot blonde that does it for you?" she asks, giving up on the flirting angle altogether, in favor of some sort of newfound comfort level of bantering that they'd just found.

"Now you're getting somewhere." He replies, with a smirk. She thinks he might be much more tolerable after this point.

\---

The clinic is busy by the time Meredith wades her way through the sea of patients, nurses, and various interns, over to George, who stands amongst it all with a sort of concerned look on his face, one that seems to have taken up permanent residence there the past few times that she's seen him. "You paged me? Overload?"

"Izzie isn't here. Again." He says, like that single fact could possibly make or break his day, the world.

Meredith, for her part, simply shrugs, unconcerned. "She's probably just with Alex. Or busy with other patients."

"No." George shakes his head. Apparently she's missing the severity of the situation, because he adds, "Izzie hasn't been here in four days. Before it was a week. She forgot to open it up last time, and I think she forgot to close it because there were people inside before there were doctors and...something is really wrong here Mer."

She frowns. "You should ask Alex what's going on. He probably knows more than we do."

"I tried that, weeks ago. He just told me never to bring Izzie up with him again." It sounded enough like Alex for Meredith to know that George had probably pressed and prodded on the topic too. "Izzie won't talk to me. Says everything's fine. But sometimes she'll talk to herself or she'll forget things. She can be looking in your general direction but you can tell she's got her attention on something else."

Izzie has been distant, that's for sure, and noticeably so. But Meredith's never seen her talk to herself, and, unless George is the one imagining things, that's something that bears bringing up and doing something about. "I'll try talking to him. He listens better when it's me."

"Thank you." He sounds unsurprisingly sincere. It's the desperation that creeps into his voice that concerns her.

\---

"Mark."

Every day is a new day to possibly get caught and have his ass kicked back to square one by Derek, which is why he takes a moment, pretty much every time he runs into Derek, to get his story straight, his head straight. In the space of one long, deep breath, he pulls it together, puts a look of nonchalance on his face. Then he can turn around. "Morning."

"More like afternoon," Derek smiles when he says it, and Mark throws a quick glance at the clock to find that he's right. It's almost two. Lexie isn't the only one with a messed up sleep schedule, and thus an equally messed up internal clock. "When do you get off shift?"

"Nine." It's when he's supposed to meet Lexie at the bar, drive her back to his hotel room, same old, same old. "Why?"

"My car broke down, and Meredith drove in before me with Sadie and she gets off at six. I was wondering if I could get a ride back home if it isn't too much trouble."

So much for those plans. However, this is Derek, and, well, unfortunately he kind of has to take precedence. "Yeah, sure, no trouble at all."

"Thanks." There's a nagging little voice in the back of Mark's mind that tells him Derek wouldn't sound so grateful if he knew, and that voice is slowly driving him toward insanity. Derek turns to leave, but he still throws over his shoulder, "I think Dr. Torres needs you for a consult by the way."

Of course, now the question becomes whether she meant a consult involving patients or...something else.

\---

"Is everything alright with you and Izzie?" There's just no other way she can figure out to broach it with him. Besides, Alex has always been a fan of the straightforward, no bullshit approach.

He looks ever so slightly annoyed with her, or maybe it's the lab results he's looking out. Either way, his words come out tinged with irritation. "First George, now you. Is Yang next?"

Meredith sits down next to him, despite getting what amounts to the cold shoulder, and tries again. "She's out of it Alex. You know that as well as I do. And George has tried talking to her and got nowhere." She sighs, waiting for a retort that doesn't come. "If anyone you're the one who needs to talk to her."

There's an absence of the normal defensiveness, more of disappointed admittance, as he replies, "She won't talk to me either, okay. I've tried, and the farthest I got was burning a sweater, okay, so just...don't."

"A sweater?" She asks, confused, thinking, then, "The sweater she made for Denny?"

"Yeah, I know. The heart patient guy shows up and then all of a sudden she disappears. I know, okay. I know and I don't know what to do about it, and I definitely don't want to think about it until I have to." He talks in circles, never quite looking at her. She nods, even still. "It has to pass. Right? This has to pass on its own."

No, she wants to say, but that simply isn't what he wants to hear and she isn't really in the mood for truth-telling and hurting people. What she says is, "Right. Everything will be fine. She's strong; she's gotten through worse."

\---

"Well, well, look who's actually coming home for once." Sadie practically greets her at the door, her and Meredith apparently having beaten Lexie home, no surprise there given that her plans had changed at the last minute.

Lexie's eyes widen a little, as she hisses, "Keep your voice down."

Sadie gives her an amused grin, as she, at the exact same volume, asks, "What are you concerned about Death hearing us?"

She still doesn't understand that nickname. Someone needs to explain that, eventually, possibly in a group setting since as far as she knows she isn't the only one completely out of the loop on that one. "Yes."

Now Sadie lowers her voice, and thank goodness for that, because the next words out of her mouth are, "So what's keeping you from sneaking off with Sloane?"

"_Sadie_," she hisses again, her eyes darting around, almost expecting Meredith to step out of the kitchen or down the stairs and hear them.

"Wow, you really do sound like your sister when you do that." Sadie replies, grabbing Lexie by the wrist and pulling her into the living room, ending up on the couch. "So what, is no one supposed to know?"

Lexie isn't sure how she didn't get that by now. "No. No one."

"Hmm," Sadie practically hums, thinking on that for a minute. "Him or you?"

"Him. Me. Both." She can't really decide.

The other woman looks rather pleased with herself when she says, "Well you two are doing a fantastically shitty job of keeping that under wraps."

Her next words are enunciated very, very deliberately. "Don't. Tell. Anyone."

Sadie just laughs, the kind of laugh where she throws her head back and her blonde waves flow over her shoulders and...just not a very comforting kind of laugh. Lexie doesn't picture this ending very well. It's just by whose hand that's the problem.

\---

They spend the first five minutes in total silence, the only sound is that of cars whizzing by and the noise of the car's engine, a calming rhythm. She never looks at him, much less say anything, and he's too busy working out what to say to actually get the words out.

This is not a feeling he's familiar with. Speechlessness.

"Did you hear about the guy down in the pit who shot the deer. He thought it was dead but it wasn't; tore the shit out of his arm." Alex starts, figures maybe it'll strike some chord with her, make her talk if it's just simple things. Work things.

It doesn't.

It's impulsive but it works, because she notices him jump lanes to pull off onto the side of the road, giving him the first words he's heard from her since this morning. "Alex, what are you doing?" He puts the car in park, wordlessly, and her brows knit together when she asks, "Is something wrong with the car? What's - what's going on?"

He turns to face her, studying her features. He can't help but think this is the most alive, most alert, he's seen her look in days. "What is your problem?"

"Excuse me?" Izzie asks, taken aback. He isn't too surprised; he never can find the right words when he needs to. When she isn't paying attention, like in the on-call room two weeks ago, the words, declarations, just keep flowing. As normal, it's never when it counts. It never is with him.

"You know, I thought it was something I was doing wrong. But it's not, is it? People tell me that you're talking to yourself or not showing up at the damn clinic. You're _never_ there - I don't even see you unless we're in car or in bed, and most nights you aren't even in bed. So what the hell is it?" And see, this, _this_, is _exactly_ why he doesn't have these conversations. Because he doesn't know how to ask nicely. He just knows how to yell.

Although, the way her eyes flash tells him that, maybe, that's what she needed. Maybe because it was the one thing no one ever tried. Everyone was too busy being nice, he was too busy being nice, to press, to push. To bring it up. "Alex, I..." she trails off, taking a shaky breath that he hears bounce off the interior of the car. "I told you I was a mess..."

"Yeah. You did. But there's a difference between being a mess and...talking to people who aren't there." He's frustrated and, yeah, this probably isn't the best time or place or even person to deal with that with but he's on a roll and she's talking and that's something. Something is better than silence and eyes that don't meet his. "Just let me in."

"I'm just..." she hesitates on the next part of her sentence, makes him want to yell at her to just say it, but he doesn't, and she seems to choose a better alternative because she says, "I just need some time to work through things on my own okay?"

He sighs, because he doesn't like it but he doesn't have much of a choice either, he said he'd never leave and that's a promise he intends to keep, so he shifts the car into gear and gets them back on the road again, leaving the conversation, and her question, hanging.

Alex goes upstairs the moment they get home, without a word to her or Sadie and Lexie, both of whom practically jumped as soon as the door opened. Meredith almost runs into him, coming out of her own room, and asks with raised eyebrows, "Did you talk to her?"

A slammed door serves as her answer, and he hears her hand come up, on the other side, poised to knock. She stops, lets out a breath that sounds like his name, and moments later he can hear her footfalls on the stairs.

The next time the door opens he's been in bed for ten minutes, the lights off, and even with his back facing the door he knows who it is when the door clicks shut. "Alex," Izzie whispers, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "are you awake?"

He doesn't answer, just to see what'll happen. She gives a heavy sigh, then stretches out next to him on the bed, nothing but the silence and a sliver of empty bed space between them.

\---

By the time Mark pulls up outside of Meredith's house it's after ten and he gives into curiosity, following Derek up the steps and into the house.

The house is dark except for the blue glow of the television in the living room. Sadie sits on the far side of the couch, legs stretched out along half the length of it, but she starts when the door closes, leaning forward so she can glance into the other room.

"Death is upstairs," she points out, as soon as she gets a good look at them, trying to be helpful. Then, glancing at Mark, she adds, "That is if you need her."

Derek doesn't read between the lines of her statement, even if Mark does, instead telling her, and by extension Mark, "you should get some sleep; tomorrow will probably be busy."

Sadie shrugs when she says, "Who needs sleep," and she sort of gives Mark this look like she's contemplating all the ways in which he could possibly aid in keeping her awake. Normally he'd be all for taking advantage of that. Right now, however, because he apparently has been brainwashed in the past few weeks, his eyes are searching the house for Lexie as discretely as possible. She isn't in his sight line. Probably went home to O'Malley.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Derek says, looking his way now, apparently finding it necessary to lower his voice in a way that makes Sadie give him a raised eyebrow and a very amused look. He is so not helping matters. "And thanks."

"Yeah," Mark nods, narrowing his eyes slightly at Sadie, before he ducks out the door.

It'll be the first night he's spent by himself in the hotel in at least a week, and he isn't exactly jumping for joy, as surprising as that is to him. He's grown accustomed to having Lexie there, even in that short time, even when their relationship is all about sneaking around and lying. She's still managed to get under his skin.

He's halfway to his car when he hears the door open behind him, and footsteps come down the stairs and start down the walk.

"She's upstairs you know." Sadie's voice floats through the cold evening air. He doesn't so much turn as stop. "Mer put her up in Stevens' room for the night, said she was tired of falling over sleeping bags in the morning."

Mark frowns, plays dumb, even, especially, as he turns to face her. "I have no idea who you would be referring to."

"Okay, fine. Never figured you for someone who would shoot down the chance to get laid." There's a faked carelessness in her voice, like she doesn't care if he comes back in that door or not, but he's fairly sure she wouldn't be standing out in the cold if she didn't.

Slowly, he turns around, giving in. Again. "Which bedroom is this?"

\---

Lexie doesn't automatically recognize that anything is out of the ordinary. It's more in stages.

There's a hand on her waist and lips on her neck, a bare chest pressed against her tank top clad back, and she sighs, moving closer to the warmth. She's gotten used to not sleeping in an empty bed; now she almost expects it, a body instead of cool, crisp sheets.

But. It's a body she hadn't gone to bed with, last she checked, and these aren't Mark's hotel room sheets, and so she jerks upright, eyes wide and unblinking, and her shoulder slams into something hard as she does.

"Fuck," it comes out as a low growl, and Mark's holding his jaw when she turns to look at him and this is _Meredith's house_, he is very much not supposed to be here.

"What are you doing?" She keeps her voice down too, because the last thing she wants is a scene. "Are you trying to get caught?"

"I drove Derek home. Figured the night didn't have to be a complete waste." His hand drops from cradling his jaw to the strap of her tank, and it's just freaking amazing how quickly he can go from zero to sixty. It's amazing how quickly she's starting to be able to do that too, as she bites her lip and forces herself to stop his hand before it moves down any further.

"Won't he know you were here?" His other hand, the free one, starts with the hem of her shirt now, slipping underneath and up her sides, hands still cold from the cold air outside. It makes her shiver and her voice shake when she adds, "You're the one who is so petrified about being found out."

"I'll leave before everyone else wakes up. You think this is the first time I've done this Grey?" Her answer to that comes out as a moan from the combined efforts of his fingers and his lips that start down her collarbone, her throat, and she sinks back into the bed, head against the pillow, as he moves over top of her.

There suddenly just isn't that much to talk about after that.

\---

Izzie just doesn't sleep anymore.

Most nights she gets out of bed and paces, either in her own room or downstairs, where she's alone and it's just her and Denny and if she closes her eyes sometimes she can forget he's there. She can convince herself that she's alone. It's worth the lack of sleep, just to have that moment where she can tell herself that she is fine and sane and this all just temporary.

Tonight that isn't an option. She can hear the television on downstairs, the sound of who she guesses must be Sadie in either the living room or the kitchen. Lexie's in her room for the night. Alex has an arm slung around her, very much in a possessive way and showing few signs of letting go anytime soon, a move he made in his sleep considering before he drifted off he wasn't even acknowledging her presence, instead opting to feign sleep. No, she isn't going anywhere tonight.

Neither is Denny, apparently. He stands in the corner, along the wall, watching her with an intensity that rattles her to the core. He doesn't say anything and neither does she. It's her new thing, trying her damndest to ignore his very presence in hopes that, eventually, he'll just stop. It doesn't seem to be working but, at this point, she has very little to lose.

She needs him gone. For her career, for her relationships, for her. Izzie knows that now.

It's just a matter of how.

\---

Sadie had meant to go to bed, not spill the remaining liquid in her glass so that it soaked straight through the blanket. But that's the kind of thing that would happen to her at almost midnight when she has to be up at four thirty.

She tries three closets downstairs, before realizing that Meredith had said she kept the blankets upstairs and so Sadie made the trek up in the dark, glad that the hallway was clear and she didn't fall over someone's discarded shoe or end up with something lodged in her foot. That also tended to happen - but that was downstairs.

Even in the dark she knows her way around. She's only been her for weeks but she can tell where she is by what she's hearing. The bedroom closest to the stairs on her right, the one where she can currently hear shaky breathing that dictates someone's crying and doesn't want someone else to know it, that's Alex's room and, presently, Izzie's. The one directly across from that, on the left, the one with soft, fairly muffled moans coming from it, is currently, thanks to her, being occupied by both Lexie and Mark. The one at the end of the hall, right near where the linen closet, the one with the rhythmic snoring, is Meredith and Derek's.

She doesn't know how they can all sleep up there; it's anything but quiet, despite some effort.

Feeling around for a blanket, she presses her lips together and tries not to laugh. It takes only a few seconds to find one that she deems suitable and, pleased, she creeps back down the stairs, tossing the soiled one in the laundry on her way back over to the living room.

From her eventual spot on the couch, as she tries to settle down and close her eyes, tries to sleep, she can see light snow falling outside of the window. All she can think of is the surgeries she'll have to sit back and watch, instead of actually aid on.


	2. Chapter 2

There's this feeling, like something is about to go wrong and he needs to get out of here now, that rouses him and forces his eyes to open. He hasn't had that feeling in a long time - not since Addison, late nights spent slipping out of that Manhattan brownstone before Derek could get home. Except for once. The one time he ignored it was the same time that had Derek not speaking to him for months.

Safe to say that never happens again.

Mark's out of bed, with his jeans pulled on and his shirt half pulled over his head, barely five seconds later, moving like this is life or death. He doesn't wake Lexie, doesn't say goodbye. He's not running away from her, he just simply isn't taking anymore risks. She'll know that. She's quick on the uptake.

His footsteps on the floor, the stairs, don't make a single sound, practiced from a life of running out on too many of his one night stands. He makes it to the door with no interruptions, digs his keys out of his pocket and then opens the door.

It takes him a few seconds to process that he's just been greeted by something in the area of two to three feet of snow outside the door. A long, _long_ few seconds.

Dammit.

\---

Derek hears the knob of the bathroom door turn, the soft click when the door closes once more, and he has time for a solitary moment of confusion, before his morning visitor speaks.

"Derek?" Meredith asks, probably in the reverse order that she should've done things. Ask first, and then walk in.

"Do you do this often?" There's a faint smile on his lips that she can't see, as he rinses the shampoo from his hair. "Walk in on unsuspecting people. Because I don't imagine your roommates like that."

"Are you kidding me?" He can hear the sound of fabric falling to the tile floor. "Alex would invite me in."

Great. Comforting. "Remind me again why he has to live here?"

The shower curtain slides open and, even standing there completely naked, she looks kind of intimidating when she says, "Because my friends are dark and twisty and occasionally kinky just like me." She steps inside with him, no invitation needed. "You like that about me, remember?"

She says it as she kisses him, her arms wrapping around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, as the water beats down her bare back. He murmurs his agreement against her lips, all hope of getting out of the shower in a timely manner lost until he thinks to ask, ""Not that I'm complaining, but aren't you supposed to be still asleep?"

"The clocks are off." Meredith replies, putting an inch or two between them so that she can get the actual conversation out of the way as quickly as possible, so as to get back to the good part. "I think the power went out last night."

"Then aren't we going to be late?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," she reminds him, and he nods, and then she's got her hands and lips back on him, slipping a bit in the suds at the bottom of the shower. They find balance up against the cool tile wall and he's just getting to the part where he sees just how many ways he can make her moan against him when there's a crash, followed by a yelp. He can barely hear it but it's enough to catch his attention and distract him, which in turn makes her whine as she lets her head rest against his chest, already giving up, knowing that one of them is going to have to go downstairs and figure out what that was because it's five in the morning and they sort of need to know.

"I'll - " he starts, and she sighs, heavily, disappointedly.

"Yeah."

\---

Izzie had just been doing her normal morning thing. Get out of bed at a semi-reasonably early hour, make coffee, find a nice quiet room without people in it and pace and think and try to breathe. Try to ignore Denny (he's there, but he's quiet, lately, and she likes it better that way).

Except usually she didn't run headlong into Mark Sloane, causing her to lose her grip on her coffee cup, and both scald him with the steaming liquid and drop the mug on his foot. He makes a sound that's a cross between a yell and a very unmanly yelp, as the mug bounces off of him and shatters against the floor. She squeaks, loudly.

"What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here." She starts, immediately, no apologies, because this is (partly) her house and he is _definitely_ the intruder here. Somehow. She doesn't even know how he got in; then it dawns on her. "Who are you sleeping with?"

"No one." He answers, far too quickly, on gut reaction, then, "And how is that an appropriate question to ask your boss?"

"I'm not the one sleeping with my intern." It's not a shot in the dark. She isn't sleeping with him (it's hard enough when it's just two people, and you're questioning whether or not one is even _there_, much less three), and Meredith better not be sleeping with him, which leaves Sadie or Lexie. Probably Sadie. She would sleep with Mark.

He glares, no room for argument. It's a Mexican standoff, dripping with too-hot coffee and confidence.

\---

This time Lexie wakes up to the sound of something crashing, probably downstairs. It is, most definitely, not anywhere near as fun as the last time she woke up. However, Mark is already gone and that means their secret is safe, so she can't call it a total loss.

She pulls on clothes, the pajamas she wore to bed the night before, and, bleary-eyed, walks out into the hall. It's empty, and she takes a second to get her bearings before she heads down the stairs. Bad idea. Derek practically runs into her back (it's her fault for standing in front of the bathroom anyway), and she jumps, sort of off to the side. He mumbles a "sorry" and, mostly dressed, hair wet like he'd just gotten out of the shower, he takes off down the stairs, apparently having heard the noise too.

Alex is the next to poke his head out of his bedroom. He's only half-dressed and doesn't look like he's slept for shit all night, squinting at her like it takes him a minute to figure out who she is. "What's going on?"

Maybe she looks around to see if she's the only one still in the hallway and thus who he's talking to. She can't help it. "I don't...I have no clue. Derek just went downstairs..." she points, like she needs to, and she would be so much more coherent if she was actually fully awake.

He stares at her. Like she's crazy. And then Meredith walks out of the bathroom in a towel (well, now she knows what was going on in the bathroom at least, not that she wants to considering), looking between the two of them, then down the hall. "What's going on?"

Lexie declines to answer this time.

\---

It's when Mark starts hearing people moving about upstairs that he realizes, without a single doubt, just how screwed he is.

Derek is going to find out. And there is absolutely nowhere he can run, unless he wants to do so in the snow and there is just no way his car is going to drive out of there. No way.

Some door upstairs opens and closes and he hears a soft thud and a surprised noise from someone, followed by footsteps on the stairs, and he knows it'll be Derek who appears in a few seconds. Because it's his luck today.

No surprise there, he's right, and he locks eyes with Derek. Anger he expects. Instead he gets disapproval mixed with disappointment because, obviously, he knows (it might be because Mark's pretty sure he looks a bit like a deer in headlights right now), and that hurts worse than the anger would have. He let him down. Again. He tried so hard not to.

His brain starts working overtime trying to come up with a suitable response for this, for why he's here, one that will get him out of trouble and keep that look off of Derek's face. His mouth, however, is not working on the same wavelength because all he manages to do is point to the still cracked open door and say, to the apparent surprise of both Izzie and Derek, "snow".

At the very least it manages to turn their attention elsewhere.

\---

Cristina's late for work. It's probably the first time since she became a resident.

She'd been up at four, seen the snow half an hour later, and left five minutes after that. The ten minutes between her apartment and the hospital took triple that but she found a way and, judging by the number of doctors actually there when she arrived, she was one of the early ones.

By the time she runs into George it's six thirty and he's looking particularly perplexed that it seems to be only them out of their little group that showed up.

"Where is everyone?"

She raises an eyebrow at him, giving a chance to correct himself, and when he doesn't replying, "Don't know if you noticed but it's snowing outside."

"But the streets are plowed. I mean we're here." George says, looking out the doors of the lobby. Outside tiny white flakes fall onto salted ground. It's a hospital; they're one of the first to see the snow plows come through.

"They're farther out," she tells him, with a shrug. He still looks worried, but they both wander off on their own separate ways (it's not like they really spend that much alone time together - a little snow won't make them bond).

When she hasn't heard anything an hour later, she palms her phone, finds Meredith's cell on speed dial and listens to the phone ring ten times before going to voicemail. Once. Twice. Three times.

It must say something about how far gone their relationship is that she gives up after that.

\---

They kind of all just filed down like they were assembling for a meeting. After all the crashing and the shrieking and the standoff in the hall, Izzie had wandered off into the kitchen to refill her coffee, Derek had taken up residence in the chair in the living room, Mark standing up against the opposite wall. Sadie, for her part, completely confused by most of this, took a seat on the arm of the couch with her own coffee, simply because there was nowhere else to go.

Sitting there, more or less directly between Derek and Mark who were looking at each other but not saying a whole hell of a lot, felt a lot like she was interrupting a particularly nasty lovers' spat. It was unnerving enough that she was almost happy when Alex and Lexie both came down, Lexie sitting on the floor, somewhere between herself and Derek, like a child who knew she'd done a bad thing and was just waiting to get yelled at for it, and Alex taking a seat on the couch, the side opposite of where she sat.

Still, there was silence. More waiting.

Izzie settles in a minute or two after that, at first sitting down somewhere in the middle of the couch, equally distant from both Alex and Sadie but, after a few really tense moments between her and Alex, ones mostly in which she was looking at him and he was trying very hard not to look at her, she grabs the throw that lies over the couch and pulls it down with her as she lies down, head resting against his leg, absolutely on purpose. His entire body relaxes, slowly, measured so that you won't notice unless you're looking. A lot of what Sadie does is observe anyways.

When Meredith comes in eventually, coming down the stairs and straight into the living room, sitting half on the arm of the chair, half on Derek's lap, the entire mood of the room shifts. And the silence breaks.

"So, we're stuck here." She says, with a sigh that seems to move through the entire room. "The Chief says not to even try to leave."

After that, people just start talking, not to any specific individual so much as the entire group, each somehow waiting their own turn to speak.

"Aren't they going to be short staffed?"

"They'll probably send some patients to Mercy West."

"Oh, yeah, Richard will love that."

"Wait, stuck here for how long?" Izzie asks, the question that stands out amid all the others, the one everyone clearly wants an answer to. Because as much as these people seem to get along, for the most part anyway, there's nothing like a few days stuck in the same house with the same people to make fights break out.

It's not like there's not enough tension in this room. This is just fuel to the fire.

Meredith suddenly looks a lot more interested in the fabric of the chair she's sitting in than meeting anyone's eyes, as she mumbles, "You know, until the snow stops. And melts."

That catches Sadie's attention, seeing as she was the only one who'd actually bothered to check the weather this morning, while everyone was freaking out. "That won't be until Christmas Eve."

"That's...wait, Christmas Eve is tomorrow."

"It's tomorrow? Seriously?"

"We're stuck here for how long?"

"At least we don't have to work." Meredith sighs out, then, off the look's of a bunch of workaholics, or possibly just people who don't want to be stuck in a house for that long, she adds, "I mean, come on, it could be nice. Isn't that what Christmas is supposed to be - being trapped in a house with...family and friends and people you...can't wait to get away from, okay, point taken."

Derek's got his eyes glued to Mark, once again, when she says that, and Sadie gets the distinctive feeling that if it wasn't for everyone else in the room they'd be at each other's throats. Granted, this is partly her fault, but Sadie can't help but look at this as full of interesting possibilities. After all, the only way to resolve tension is to fight it out. Or...other ways.

At least it won't be a boring holiday.

\---

When Mark decides he can't take the looks, or the way no one seems to really know what to do with him, he escapes back upstairs and into - well he isn't quite sure whose room it is. Either Lexie or Izzie's. Regardless, it's got his stuff, more specifically his cell phone in it, his sole connection to the outside world and therefore people who don't either want to kill him or choose to ignore him.

"Help me," he says into the phone, as soon as his call rings through.

"Help you?" Callie asks, sounding rushed and tired, the background chatter a definite sign that she was actually at work. "Where the hell are you?"

"Snowed in." He groans as he adds, "At Meredith Grey's house."

It's quite possible that she isn't even trying to contain her laughter, judging by the way she practically howls with it. "You're kidding me?" His silence gives every indication that he is, in fact, not, no matter how much he wishes he was. "How did you end up there?"

"Long story."

"Well, I don't actually have a lot of time on my hands, seeing as half the staff is unaccounted for or snowed in, so make it fast." The beginning of that sentence gave him hope that maybe she would be letting him off the hook - alas, no such luck.

"I --," he starts, stops. Might as well get it out, she's going to figure it out eventually. "I'm sleeping with Lexie Grey."

There's a pause and he can hear her stop short in the hallway. He winces as her voice rises in volume, "You slept with an intern. You give me your whole ‘no hot interns' speech and then you go and sleep with one."

"Shh, keep it down." He tells her, reflexively.

"It's _Seattle Grace_." Callie reminds him. "Everyone is going to know before the year is even over, blizzard or not." There's another pause, but at least the silence is comfortable, instead of downstairs. "Derek's not happy with you is he?"

Mark nods his head to an empty room. "Not at all."

"Are you - " she stops mid-question, and he can hear someone talking to her on the other end. She says something back to them, before speaking directly into the phone again. "I have to go. Keep me posted."

He's talking to dead air and a dial tone as he exhales a, "yeah".


	3. Chapter 3

It ends with them as the last ones left in the living room, as everyone breaks off to do their own thing. Meredith eyes her half-sister with some amount of concern, every bit the big sister that Lexie had wanted not all that long ago.

There's a variety of things she could say. She could tell her that it's not that big of a deal, except it is. She could tell her that sometimes men change their ways, except that this is Mark Sloan, and she doesn't think people ever really change - there's always some part of who they were left behind to rear up at the most inopportune time. She could just ignore, instead talk about the weather or Christmas or bond over some missed childhood memories, except Meredith has never been that person.

Mostly, she just wants to ask Lexie what the hell she's thinking sleeping with an attending. She wants to take the hypocritical route. Because if Lexie should've learned any lesson from her so far, it's that sleeping with attendings usually gets you nowhere but trouble. And it's wrong. It'll make the other interns mistreat her. It'll make people assume that she got to where she is simply because of who she slept with.

She wants to tell her all of that, but she isn't sure how to do it while still making Lexie believe her, while still making her not hating her. Because while they don't have the best relationship, and yes, that's mostly her own fault, she doesn't want to ruin what little they do have.

Lexie doesn't give her a chance to anyways. "You don't have to say it, you know."

Meredith looks at her, as non-judgmentally as possible. "Say what?"

"You don't have to tell me about how this will ruin everything or how bad of an idea this was." Lexie looks down, fingers brushing across the carpet below her. She'd stayed on the floor, even after everyone had gotten up and left. Briefly, Meredith entertains the idea that Lexie was saying all of this because she already knew that she'd done something wrong. She already knew to call it off. Then, "You don't need to play the big sister. Because I'm not a child, and I don't need to be told who I can and can't sleep with. Not by you, and not by Derek, and certainly not by George. I don't need to be babysat or watched over. I'm a big girl, okay."

The words carry far more force than her voice does, and her eyes never lift off of the ground. Meredith knows she still means every single word of it. She wouldn't have said if she hadn't, because from what she does know of Lexie she isn't one to talk back unless it's her breaking point.

So Meredith, with no speech left to give, just sits back in her chair and nods, while Lexie gets up and walks out of the room.

\---

There are times where Izzie wishes that she knew Derek a little better. She lives with him, yes, because of Meredith, but she doesn't _know him_. She knows Dr. Shepherd, not the man behind the surgical mask, the white lab coat. It just strikes her as odd, living with someone without really knowing, understanding, them, and having them know very little of you.

And then there are times when she is insanely glad to be able to talk to someone who probably has no idea what's going on behind the scenes of her own life. Who can, with a little work, a few lies, be taken for a fool.

It's for a good cause, she thinks to herself, rationalizing the idea of taking advantage of their lack of a relationship a second before she actually does it.

"Can I ask you a question?" She prefaces, keeping her eyes on the pancake batter she's stirring.

"Sure." His voice is casual, calm, a change from before. Everyone had seen the way he was looking at Mark. Everyone knew what was going on there. He was probably too focused on that to really read into anything else.

"What could be causing a patient to see things?" It's a vague question, nothing too specific, something she should be able to figure out herself, except she's not exactly unbiased, and she needs a second opinion, preferably from someone who really knows what they're talking about.

"Hallucinations?" He asks, and she nods. "Any number of things. Why?"

"Well, it's..." she pauses, to come up with a plausible backstory, a reason to be asking. It doesn't take her very long. "George has this patient that he's been talking about. He's seeing things, like...people who aren't supposed to be there type of things. And he says he's not sure what could be causing it, so I figured I'd ask you since it has to be neurological, right?"

"Not necessarily." His gaze shifts to her, and she meets his eyes, like proving a point. Look him in the eye and he'll never know how much she's lying through her teeth. It works like a charm, because he continues when she does. "It could be a brain aneurysm, and every time it flares up it could cause the person to see something that isn't there. It could be a brain tumor. It could be various smaller, more rare disorders. Or it could be psychological."

"Psychological?" Izzie asks, clinging to that possibility since none of the others sounded particularly comforting.

"You'd need a psych consult for that," he tells her, making it clear that it was an avenue he wasn't willing to explore, but adding anyway, "Posttraumatic stress disorder, among others. Or the patient could just be losing their mind, quite literally." She nods again. She was afraid of that last answer. "Why isn't George asking me himself?"

"I don't think he had a chance to. I mean, he just said something about it yesterday." Silently, she prays Derek doesn't take this further before she has the chance to correct the problem herself. Or find someone who can. "I'm sure he'll appreciate the help though; I'll probably call him about it later."

Derek nods, and they fall back into a semi-comfortable silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Denny watches.

\---

It's fitting that just as soon as Lexie flees from what was almost Meredith's awkward lecture on why she shouldn't sleep with an attending, she runs into Sadie. Because at that point she's in the mood to blame someone for this. Or at the very least argue.

"You got me in so much trouble," she says, cornering Sadie in the empty hallway, far enough from the stairs that she won't be running.

Sadie doesn't seem at all fazed. That shouldn't be a surprise; in her experience, nothing fazes Sadie. "But it was fun, wasn't it?"

Lexie presses her lips together, forces herself not to smile at the thought of just how much fun it had been. There was something about the forbidden that made her feel so very, very alive. Instead, she does her best to put on an intimidating face, which Sadie only seems to laugh at. "This is not funny. Meredith's trying to give speeches, and did you see Derek and Mark? Did you see the looks on their faces?"

"Everyone saw that." Sadie replies, cocking her head to the side, her eyes following something that Lexie can't see. She glances over her shoulder, watching Alex go downstairs with a look like he could possibly breathe fire on his face. Unhappy is an understatement. Sadie drops her voice, as he ventures downstairs and out of earshot, "What's his problem?"

"Stop changing the subject," Lexie orders.

Sadie's eyebrows raise sky high, and that smile comes back again. "Yes, mother. And it's not like you didn't know it was supposed to snow."

"It was almost midnight and I'd been asleep for an hour. I didn't know my own name." Which was stretching the truth a little. She'd known enough to tell him that sleeping over was a potentially bad idea. Not enough to remember why though.

"Look at it this way: at least the truth is out. No more hiding. I mean so what if people know. What are they going to do? There's nothing saying you can't do it. It's just frowned upon."

It's all true. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just a fact of enduring Meredith, of watching Mark endure the disapproval of his best friend. Again, apparently, and she knew that was the one thing Mark had been trying desperately to avoid. The truth may be out, but that could be what ruins what is, right now, a good thing. At the very least, it's a comfortable thing.

Lexie's sigh comes out far too shaky, and something in Sadie's face changes, softens, as she says, "Everything will be okay. You'll see."

\---

After breakfast, Meredith makes a point of catching Derek's eye, holding it as she turned to go upstairs. He follows her upstairs, into their bedroom, and she finds herself quite proud of just how well that was communicated.

If only she could accomplish the same things with her words, they'd be set.

"Maybe we should just leave well enough alone." She starts, leaning back against the dresser, shifting her hips so that the bare inch of skin between her jeans and top reveals itself, not above using methods of subtle distraction to help her cause.

"What do you mean?" He asks, and his eyes only glance there for a second before they find her face again. Because he listens. That's his thing now. She should be happier than she is.

"Mark and Lexie. She's not a kid, she's right about that. And maybe it's just for the best that we don't start anything if we're going to be stuck here for the next few days. We don't need to make this any worse than it already is." As usual, she came armed with a variety of reasons. She just can't pick from them.

Derek's already shaking his head, so slightly that she's not even sure he's aware he's doing it. "I told him not to do it. He did it anyway. Again."  
"We're not their parents." Meredith presses.

"It's betrayal." He cuts in, before she can truly start up again. "In the end this doesn't have anything to do with them. This is about betrayal, between me and him, again."

"I don't think he meant it that way."

"It doesn't matter how he meant it."

Sometimes, thankfully not all that often, Derek gets this cocky streak where everything he says just seems to infuriate her. This is rapidly becoming a very good example of that. "You're being unreasonable."

"Maybe." He shrugs, nonchalantly.

"He's your best friend Derek. This is nothing." She tries, but Derek's face, his eyes, don't change at all, and it's crystal clear that nothing she says is going to change his mind at all. "Fine. Just...deal with it in private."

He'll give her that much, apparently. "Yeah," he says, voice free of that particular tone, and he leaves the bedroom, conversation over.

Out of habit, she checks her pager that lies silent on her dresser, then her cell phone. The phone blinks ‘1 missed call', and when she flips it open she sees Cristina's name. With a sigh, albeit a slightly relieved one because at least she had tried to call, that made her hopeful, she dialed her friend's number.

The phone rings. And rings. And despite the fact that Meredith knows Cristina rarely goes anywhere without her phone if she's not dealing with patients, in case the call is hospital related, no one picks up.

\---

Cristina knows that her phone is ringing. A quick glance tells her who it is too. But she won't pick it up, just lets the harsh ringing echo in her head, and keeps on walking.

Later. She'll deal with this later.

"Your phone is ringing." Owen appears next to her, as she pushes open the door to the stairwell.

"I know."

"Aren't you going to answer it?"

She shakes her head, "No."

"Those aren't even supposed to be on. It's a hospital, remember?"

It would figure that, on a day where she's beginning to want nothing more than to be left alone, he's one of the few to actually show up to work. Because they're...something that involves random make-out sessions, generally taking place somewhere in the hospital, and she really doesn't want to deal with him anymore than she wants to deal with her and Meredith's drama and rapidly crumbling friendship. "Only when we could possibly interfere with any machines. I've been working here longer than you; I know the rules."

He falls silent, but keeps walking alongside her, taking the stairs at a mirrored pace to hers, even when she alternately speeds up and slows down.

"Is there something you want?"

"You look worried about something." He says, with a shrug. He's looking at her, has been since they ran into each other more or less, probably more than what's entirely healthy if he doesn't want to fall down the stairs.

Finally, she meets his eyes, lowered brows knit together, a frown on her face. "Well, I'm not."

"You sure about that?"

"Yes." His face belies the fact that he doesn't believe her. Of course not.

She has trouble finding her footing on the next stair; has to look away, down, in order to avoid falling.

\---

Eventually they all end up back in the living room. Meredith's house isn't so big when there are seven people in it and an infinite amount of time to be spent. It isn't long before you run out of places to hide.

Sadie brings it up when there's a natural lull in any conversation, no sound left but the television telling tales of no hope for freedom. "You know, for being two days away from Christmas, there's a sad lack of decorations here."

Meredith shifts in her chair, like she's worried about the possibilities of what Sadie may be starting by saying that. "I guess we were just busy and didn't get that far."

Obviously, Izzie's the one to jump in next. From what Sadie had been told, she had been the one with all the holiday spirit, though not recently. "Don't we have that fake tree up in the attic? Your mother's old one."

"Yeah, but it's old and..."

"So? It's Christmas. And it's not like we have a lot of options." Izzie continues, before Meredith can get much else out, seemingly already settled on the idea.

"I am not going up in that attic," Alex says, with a shake of his head, looking at Derek like he's passing a torch and he probably is, since the few times she's seen anyone go up there it's him that gets forced to. She isn't sure what the problem is other than it's a complete mess and last time he almost broke something. But that was just what she was able to discern from the arguing.

"You'll live." Meredith cuts in, apparently resigning herself to it.

And so began their latest attempt at distraction.


End file.
